Anorexia Nervosa Treatment | Self Esteem Script

OSTEOPOROSIS

Hypnotherapy in the Treatment of Osteopathy
by Stephanie Jourdan, Ph.D.————————————————————————————————————————–

Question) Why do people in poor countries have healthier bones than those living in the richest countries in the world?
(Answer) Lifestyle.

Osteoporosis is the condition of excessively thin bones and has become the most common bone disorder in the United States. Half of all Caucasian American women will have suffered one or another osteoporotic fracture by the age of 50 … spanning from a slight spinal fracture that goes undetected to a life-threatening hip fracture. And by age 65, a third of those women will have experienced at least one spinal vertebral fracture. By age 85, the majority will have had at least one partial spinal deformity.

Spinal fractures result in untold spinal deformation and painful crippling. 30% of hip fractures result in long-term care and 20% end in death.

15% of our American population is 65 or over. This figure will climb to 25% by 2050. More people are fracturing more bones more often. Hip fractures alone account for $40 billion annually. Some authorities speculate that hip fractures alone could bankrupt the Medicare system.

And yet, this disease barely exists in much of the world. Have we as a society created it? If so, can we eliminate it?

Osteoporosis is a degenerative disease. Its cause stems from a breakdown, a degeneration, of normal physiological functioning. When functioning normally, the body builds and maintains lifelong healthy bones. This is a natural, effortless process in vertebrate animals all over the world. Bone is built spontaneously; it requires no conscious effort. This generative process is natural, simple and automatic. It is only when the body is forced to adapt to less-than-ideal circumstances that it builds weak and fragile bones.

Unhealthful lifestyles throw our bodies out of balance. Balance and coordination among every body system are necessary for full and spontaneous functioning. Balance is necessary for even the lowest level of physical functioning and a very refined level of balance is necessary for optimum physical and mental functioning. Healthy bones are the result of balanced functioning of many bodily systems.

In an evolutionary sense, there is a constant balancing act between the strength and the weight of bone. The evolutionary advantage is in having the lightest possible bones capable of doing the job that needs to be done. Our bones evolve and adapt day by day, always with the same efficient goal of being no more heavy than necessary. If we put more stress on them through exercise, if we build muscle or have a heavier body to move around, bones will be stronger. They grow stronger in response to the demands that are placed upon them. If we are inactive, our bones become lighter and thinner.

The latest reports on osteoporosis are no longer focused on menopause and hormone therapy, but rather upon lifestyle changes. Today, most degenerative diseases, and certainly osteoporosis, actually represent the approach the body takes to valiantly maintain an internal balance.

While our bodies might seem essentially the same day in, day out, they are constantly changing with every breath and every meal. In just one year, 98% of all the atoms in our bodies will have been replaced. Even our fat cells are filled with fat and emptied out constantly resulting in a complete “oil change” every three weeks.

Bone is alive. At any given moment, anywhere from one to ten million sites are busily dissolving old bone tissue and replacing it with new. Every atom within our skeleton is replaced within a three-month period. Bone is living tissue, constantly nourished and detoxified by blood vessels.

Bone loss generally begins in the late 30’s, and in women can accelerate around menopause. This is not a consistent finding though. Even rapid bone loss slows a few years into menopause and by the mid or late 50’s, the rate of bone loss returns to less then a percent per year or even ceases. Bone loss begins in the late 60’s for men.

Bones do more than give us structure and protection, they produce some 2.4 million red blood cells every second. In return for all this mass manufacture of red blood, it requires a constant supply of nutrients.

99% of your total calcium is stored in your bones. 85% of phosphorus, 60% of magnesium, and 35% of sodium. Not only do these minerals give strength and rigidity to our bones, these minerals are stored in the bones for the whole body.

Calcium maintains many essential functions: heartbeat, nerve transmission, blood clotting, and enzyme activation. Calcium is the most fundamental regulator of intracellular processes and the role of the bone as regulator of calcium metabolism is more vital than structural strength. When the blood calcium level drops, calcium gets pulled from the bone and deposited into the bloodstream. The same applies to the other minerals stored in the skeleton. The process is accomplished by bone cells called osteoclasts, whose role it is to break down small bits of bone releasing calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and other nutrients for use in the blood. Another group of bone cells called the osteoblasts does the reverse by absorbing and restoring the minerals. If these two processes are not perfectly balanced, i.e., more minerals leave than can be absorbed for rebuilding, than the bones become thin and weak.

Bones are designed for strength and resistance, yet they must also be flexible. The hip must be able to withstand 600 pounds of force yet be flexible enough to tolerate twisting and bending without breaking. Bone contains an elastic living matrix made of protein. This living part of bone is called collagen and it makes up 22% of all bone. The collagen gives the flexibility and the minerals which are deposited on the honeycombed protein matrix, give rigidity and strength.

Effective Imagery

The osteoclasts eat up old, weakened segments of bone, while the osteoblasts lay down fresh new segments of bone. The process can be visualized as a highway repair. The site is excavated removing the old weakened asphalt. New material is put down.

This is bone remodeling. This self-repair process is vital to emulate as imbalances in the bone remodeling causes osteoporosis. When more old bone is eaten up than new bone laid down, bone loss occurs. Be sure to stress in your visualization that the highway repairmen find that they have ample building materials available to them.

Related Factors

Bone density is but one risk factor. Other factors include:

Only on feet for fewer than four hours per day.

Not walking for exercise.

Poor depth perception and/or poor contrast sensitivity.

Resting heartbeat of 80 or greater beats per minute.

Inability to rise from a chair without using arms.

Also essential to bone building beyond adequate quantities of essential nutrients are the needs for healthy and well-balanced endocrine gland functioning, appropriate exercise and activity, and well balanced bodily chemistry.

* Chew your food well and eat at a moderate pace.
* Eat in a peaceful and relaxed environment.
* Eat simply and moderately.
* Eat warm, freshly-cooked fresh foods.
* Drink hot water and herbal teas.
* Sit still for a few minutes following your meal.
* Take digestive enzymes.
* Eat fruit between meals.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Kidneys and kidney energy are viewed as responsible for the utilization of minerals and the health of the skeleton. The kidney is also the organ system where your vital energy is stored and depletion of the energy leads to aging and general debilitation, as well as a weakened skeleton.

Traditional Chinese medicine focused upon lifestyle habits and herbal therapies to tonify and nourish the kidneys, especially as one ages. Menopause is seen as a beneficial mechanism wherein the body seeks to preserve the vital kidney energy by ceasing the loss of nutrient rich blood every month.

INSOMNIA

Hypnotherapy for Parents Who Are Up All Night
by Stephanie Jourdan, Ph.D.

Are you an exhausted parent because your child refuses to go to bed … has insomnia … night terrors … enuresis … head banging … sleepwalking?

Have you been inundated with well-intentioned advice? Presumably, your child has been diagnosed by a physician and the sleep disorder is clearly behavioral and not due to a physical dysfunction.

Hypnotherapy treats the problem as a family systems issue. Suggestions are given to hypnotized parents that they are now aware of the first steps to take to establish new routines and schedules. Both parents are hypnotized simultaneously after a family plan has been discussed. The problem is not a matter of poor parenting … sleep disorders are very common.

Amazingly, researchers still do not fully understand why people need to sleep and what purpose sleep serves. They do know that sleep does serve some restorative function and is mandatory for normal, daily functioning.

Researchers had always thought that sleep was a single state that was completely different from an awake state. Now we know that sleep itself is divided into two different states: REM (more active, dream state) and non-REM (when the sleeper lies quietly).

After the earliest months of life, non-REM sleep divides into four stages of its own that represent progressively deeper levels. These stages can be identified by monitoring brain waves, eye movements, and muscle tone on a polygraph.

As you begin to fall asleep, you enter Stage I, the state of drowsiness as your awareness of the external world begins to diminish.

As you continue to deepen, you transition into Stage II of a fully established non-REM sleep. Short bursts of very rapid activity called sleep spindles, and large, slow waves called K-complexes, begin to appear. Someone could easily awaken you at this stage, but you might not believe that you had been asleep.

As you fall more deeply asleep, you enter Stage III and finally Stage IV. The smaller and faster brain waves of light sleep and waking disappear and your brain waves now show predominantly large, very slow delta waves. Your breathing and heart rate become very stable. You may sweat profusely, and you will be very difficult to awaken. However, if the stimulus is important enough, you would awaken, so it seems that even in the deepest Stage IV sleep, our minds can still process some outside information. We would probably awaken somewhat confused.

The difficultly in making the transition from Stage IV non-REM sleep to alert waking is very significant in several sleep disorders in children, such as sleep terrors, thrashing, enuresis (bedwetting), and sleepwalking.

After one or two cycles in non-REM sleep, you will enter REM sleep, a different state entirely. Both breathing and heart rate become irregular. Your reflexes, kidney function, and patterns of hormone release change. Temperature regulation is impaired, and so you will not sweat or shiver. REM sleep requires more oxygen … you are expending more energy. There is more blood flow to the brain, its temperature increases, and your brain waves will become quite busy, resembling a mixture of waking and drowsy patterns. The mind now “wakes,” but the wakefulness of the dream state is quite different from that of being truly awake. You primarily respond to signals originating within your own body instead of from the outer world. The strange dream world seems quite normal and acceptable.

During this state, you have very poor muscle tone, especially in the head and neck, where you become extremely relaxed. Nerve impulses that otherwise would pass down the spinal cord and out to the muscles are blocked within the spinal cord, so that much of your body is effectively paralyzed. Signals to move may still be sent out from your brain, but they do not get through to your muscles. The only muscles spared are those controlling eye movements, respiration, and hearing. Because the blockade is not complete, some of the stronger signals will get through to the muscles, leading to frequent small twitches of the hands, legs or face. So although REM sleep is very active in terms of metabolic and brain function, you remain fairly still.

One theory suggests that, over the course of evolution, REM sleep was an intermediate state between non-REM and waking in which the mind would wake up before being connected to the body. This would allow an animal to go to sleep and obtain the restorative value of non-REM sleep. In this state, with no movement and regular breathing, it would be safe from predators. A sudden waking from non-REM, however, would leave the animal confused and subject to attack. By switching first into REM sleep, its brain could become more alert, but still disconnected from the muscles to prevent any movement that might alert a predator. Once the animal was sufficiently alert, it would fully awaken, the muscle paralysis would disappear, and it could react appropriately to the danger.

This checking for danger may still be relevant in humans. We all tend to wake up briefly after an episode of dreaming. At this time, we will notice whether something seems amiss in our environment, i.e., the smell of smoke, sound of footsteps or crying, etc. If all seems well, we simply return to sleep and usually do not remember this waking in the morning. Many young children, however, can not fall asleep quickly after these normal arousals because something seems wrong to them. An example is the child wakes up in a crib after falling asleep while being held. The brain registers a change that does not make sense.

There is evidence that sleep patterns begin to develop in babies en utero. REM sleep appears in the fetus at about six months? gestation and non-REM sleep between seven and eight months.

A newborn sleeps approximately 16 to 17 hours every day, but only a few hours at a time. By the age of three or four months, the baby sleeps about 15 hours a day and is broken down into four or five sleep times. By six months, nearly all infants have settled down into a continuous nighttime sleep for about 12 hours, plus a daytime nap of an hour or two. Most children still sleep 14 hours a day at a year old, but it dwindles down to 11 or 12 hours by two years old. The afternoon nap generally continues until about age three. From age three to adolescence, children need less and less sleep, rarely napping post toddler phase, sleeping a total of about ten hours. Teenagers sleeps about seven to eight hours, but this is considered a result of academic and social pressures more than a reduction in need. Of course these figures are overly generalized.

When it comes to nightly bedtime routine, keep in mind that a pleasant bedtime ritual creates a happy association for the child. She looks forward to going to bed and sleeping instead of becoming fussy.

Remember that bedtime for your child means separation from you. He needs cozy, personal time from the parent. Of course you feel frustrated. The key to good sleep patterns for your child is creating positive, happy associations for your child as he falls asleep.

A hypnotherapist can offer you suggestions that the sleep you do get is deeply refreshing, enabling you to awaken as needed during the night to help recreate the positive bedtime rituals so that your child can return to sleep. This may mean holding, rocking, back rubbing, singing, talking, etc. until he falls back to sleep. You can also be given a suggestion that every time your child cries or calls out during the night, it is a pleasure for you to give the child what he needs to feel safe and secure. It is easy to give in this way because whatever sleep you have already gotten seems enough.

Most of us as adults have forgotten how important it is to have just the right bedtime ritual. It becomes most apparent to us when any of those factors is altered by sleeping away from home. We need our pillow that is just the right softness or fluffiness and our mattress that is just the right firmness. We need our side of the bed, our blankets, our usual sounds, ventilation, and temperature. If our senses are picking up different smells, sounds, textures or air movements, we can not let go because our mind is busy registering the differences.

Imagine falling asleep on your pillow only to awaken with your face against the mattress because your pillow is missing. You would want your pillow back. But what if it was not just a matter of reaching for it and repositioning it again. What if you were somehow powerless to retrieve it. You would call out for help. You can imagine how this would feel if you were a baby.

Often the problem is that the usual bedtime ritual or happy sleep associations that work for your child are no longer workable for you. Maybe your child is too big to hold and rock while standing. Or maybe your family dog that slept on his bed has passed away and the new puppy does not settle in. Maybe your child needs a new set of positive, happy bedtime associations. You need to choose what ritual can be realistically practiced with consistency. If your child is old enough, you may want to talk about it with your child. Once the new routine has been decided upon, hypnosis can be used to send any of the following suggestions into your subconscious mind:

It is easy for you to be patient while your child learns new, happy, bedtime associations.

Every minute of your own sleep renews and replenishes your body, mind and spirit.

Your wisdom and love for your child keeps your emotions even.

Giving your child what he needs gives you what you need.

You easily stay focused on what is important, allowing you to maintain regular meal and nap times.

You are able to immediately fall back to sleep whenever you return to your bed at any time during the night or early morning.

It is easy for you to adapt to the sleep routines of being a parent.

When your child whines, it is easy for you to remember that this is his way of asking for closeness.

You can trust your own wisdom regarding what is best for your child.

Make sure that your expectations are realistic. Is it possible that you are putting your child to bed before his natural bedtime? If so, that may be why he is having a hard time going to sleep. If you were encouraged to take extra long naps during the day, you too would have a hard time falling asleep at your normal bedtime. If you were awakened before your normal waking time to meet the schedule of another person, you too would feel groggy and unable to move quickly to get dressed and ready to leave.

ANOREXIA

Treating Anorexia Nervosa with a Myth

by Stephanie Jourdan, Ph.D.

Loosely translated, this condition is a nervous loss of appetite.

In order to treat anorexia, you must have a prescription from a medical doctor to rule out any possible physical illness that could account for the weight loss. Since most anorectics have a sleep disorder, you should be able to bill their medical insurance through a physician.

Statistics indicate that one out of 250 girls between the ages of 12 and 18 will develop anorexia. One out of five dies.

In my experience of treating anorexia, all of which involved teenage girls, the majority had introverted personalities with very extraverted mothers.

There is usually a problem in the parents’ marriage and the anorectic teen seeks to embody the ideal that holds the family together (the identified patient as mediator or star of the family).

The mother has usually been rejected by her husband and is unconsciously jealous of the attention that her husband gives to their daughter. The husband senses this and withdraws his attention and approval from his daughter.

In his own anger with his wife, he often utters passive/aggressive comments about other women, perhaps TV or movie stars, looking great.

The hurt and angry wife has subsequently stepped into her masculine self in order to fight back. She has become more dominant in her family role and manages the family with a more righteous than nurturing attitude. She has unconsciously rejected her daughter as an individual, seeing her daughter instead as a mirror of her own sadness for her unlived life.

Anorexics seem to be very bright and sensitive and understand that their domineering mothers are actually powerless as a result of having been rejected by their husbands. (Many times the mother also becomes a client and it has also been my experience that the mothers were rejected by their mothers and had no role for feminine nurturing.)

The girl does not want to compete with her mother or put herself in a similar situation when she grows up.

Her mother may also be stuck in girlhood and secretly fantasizes about being rescued by a fairytale prince. She might force her daughter into the maternal role. After a while, the daughter rejects the role of being her mother’s mother and her father’s partner and desperately seeks to define her boundaries as a child.

Finally, the girl’s feelings are channeled into fantasy. Her sexual feelings are transformed into fairytale proportions of the whole world offering its approval in the way it offers famous models or other media figures approval.

The anorectic is afraid of her body. She wants it to obey her mind, which seeks a state of goodness and perfection (emphasis on perfection). She has tremendous judgment about her humanity, so the feeling side of her becomes subjugated to her mind. She loses her connection to her primal, intuitive, and instinctual nature . . . her inner feminine. Often her dreams reflect this in interactions with a gigantic chocolate lady, signifying the black Madonna, the symbolic life force of the feminine shadow.

I have found that the key to reestablishing balance in her young life is to offer her indirect suggestions that help her to feel safe about reconnecting with her inner feminine in the form of intuition, cycles, and instincts.

The client is desperately seeking her own identity, both physically and psychically. She feels alone and lonely. She needs to know that others’ ideas about being good are meaningless for her if her motivation doesn’t come from her own heart. The Snow White myth is perfect for the imbedding of these kinds of suggestions. I prefer to change the ending, where Snow White is passive, awaiting rescue from an external male, to one where her own internal power awakens her.

I also embed indirect suggestions regarding the reversal of some of her symptoms. I assume that she will identify with Snow White, so I talk about Snow White having the inner resources to grow thick, lustrous hair. Since most anorectics have thinned hair as a result of malnutrition, the inference is that she will be guided to resource herself in a way that enables her to grow thick hair.

I should probably mention a little more about the mother, since the client is usually brought to you by her terrified mother.

The mother’s identity is wrapped up in her role as wife and mother. She already perceives herself as a failure because she failed to attain her goal as her husband’s ideal (no woman can be a man’s ideal given that she is human – or at least not for long). She is scared that she may have to face her fear that she has also failed as a mother. Since hypnosis is often a last resort, the girl’s condition may be extremely serious. The mother needs her daughter to live to confirm her success as a mother. The anorexia is very threatening to her reputation as a good mother and her daughter knows it.

You will feel the mother’s need for approval and attention even from you. The girl will be watching to see whether you can hold your boundary with her mother. She needs to see that you are strong enough to protect her. Focus on establishing rapport with her, the daughter, even if it means losing rapport with the mother. When the mother sees her daughter respond to you, she will have to be supportive.

You will be faced with the same dilemma the daughter faces: you will have to listen to your heart and not the mother’s cries for approval.

You will have to risk disappointing the mother. You will have to role model how this is done for the daughter.

It is imperative that the daughter, the client, decide to continue with the hypnotherapy and schedule her future appointments herself as a sign that she is committed to the success of the therapy.

Do not let the mother persuade you to offer suggestions about weight gain, consumption of bigger portions, eating with the family, reducing exercise, halting diuretics, increasing caloric intake, etc. You will lose rapport with your client.

Let the daughter know that you are there to serve her. Ask her whether she would like a suggestion that she easily attain what she considers her ideal weight. Of course, she may give you an ideal weight in the form of a particular number of pounds. That’s fine. Your client assumes that her ideal weight is her conscious mind’s idea of an ideal weight. Remember Dr. Erickson’s words, something to the effect that your conscious mind is very smart, but your unconscious mind is a whole lot smarter? Well, her conscious mind is thinking her ideal weight as a number of pounds, but you are offering her suggestions thatthe wisest part of her will instinctively choose the most ideal weight for her greatest beauty and happiness.

The wise part of her will direct her to nurture herself in a way that reestablishes her health so that she will naturally have a beautiful and healthy body.

Give her the impression that all you are going to do for the first couple of sessions is some stress reduction as everyone benefits from relaxation and improved sleep. Explain that all you are going to do is tell her a story, a fairy tale, and then, at the very end, when she feels deeply relaxed, you will give her a suggestion for her ideal weight.

The fairy tale of Snow White is a wonderful metaphor. The anorectic girl wants to identify with the purity, goodness, beauty and perfection of Snow White. Especially since Snow White is a victim of an absent father (workaholic) and a devouring mother figure (the evil queen step-mother).

When the queen asked the court hunter (the part of the psyche that finds what it needs) to take Snow White into the woods, it symbolized Snow White leaving her past and entering her subconscious. The seven dwarves represent the seven avarices of greed, sloth, pride, envy, vanity, gluttony and lust. (Not exactly Disney’s portrayal.)

When Snow White finds a way to live with them, it represents her new-found ability to accept and exist with her human faults and frailties. Remember, the anorectic has sought to live out perfection.

Snow White’s stepmother lacks soul. All her worth is determined by her reflection. Appearance is everything. She lives for male attention. She has no sense of self and cannot give her stepdaughter a sense of herself either. The stepmother fears aging and teaches her daughter to fear the process of evolution as it eventually betrays you.

The stepmother has been consumed by the darkness of fear. She turns herself into an evil sorceress, as that is the only power she knows, the seduction of others’ power. She symbolizes Snow White’s repressed feminine. The feminine is the giver of life. It demands expression in one form or another. Her repressed feminine is a wicked witch because it has not been safe for Snow White to experience femininity as a growing sense of empowerment, i.e., the evolution of the female body and the accompanying hormonal changes and feelings of sexuality.

The anorectic has a mother who also lives in fear of rejection. She is the over-expression of the feminine that counters the anorectic’s under-expression of the feminine. The mother is out of control of her emotions, so the daughter must be very in control of hers.

The apple is a traditional symbol of the temptation of the feminine. The anorectic’s repressed inner feminine wants to be tasted. The power of sexuality, as embodied in the red, ripe apple, is too frightening to chew and digest.

All Snow White knows of the energy of the mature feminine is her abandonment by her mother, who died in the fairy tale, and the competition (jealousy of appearance) of her stepmother, her only source of possible love and nurturing. She tries to please her. She wants to be perfect. She tries to avoid being her competition by not developing. Still, she finds no love and believes something must be wrong within her. She is not deserving of nurturing or life. She doesn’t want to grow up and be devouring like her stepmother. There is no role model. There is no way to grow up and feel good about herself. She has to find a way to be safe until she can figure it out.

The witch tempts her with the red, ripe apple assuring her that it will bring her heart?s fondest desire. Snow White dreams of her Prince Charming and takes a bite. She gets a taste of the fruit and becomes paralyzed by her desire for passion and her fear of where it will lead. This is Snow White?s coma.

The anorexic has compartmentalized her emotions in the same way that Snow White has been kept in a glass coffin. She appears sweet and pretty, but she is unable to feel or interact. She can only be rescued by love, by feeling… Snow White’s Prince Charming.

And here is where the suggestions can be buried in the story. Alter the story so that the onset of springtime brings new growth and strength to Snow White?s heart. The rays of the sun gently awaken Snow White and fill her with hope. The energy of the sun, which represents her conscious self, helps her safely feel the loss of real nurturing and the lack of protection from her father.

As days go by, the beauty of nature’s return in the spring enables Snow White to feel her mother’s love for her return and grow strong inside her heart. Snow White becomes so strong inside that she is able to deal with her feelings about the betrayal of her stepmother, who would not recognize her true value and make a space for her in the world.

Her rage raises her body temperature and her blood pressure. It sends new life into her bones, her skin, her nails, and her hair. Even as she lies in the coffin, Snow White’s thick, long, hair takes on a life of its own (symbolic of a woman’s crowning glory).

She feels her loving mother’s presence inside her. The feeling of love nurtures her on every level. Her radiance glows through the coffin drawing the prince to her. She knows the power of her mother’s love is stronger than that of the devouring stepmother. She knows that love will create her ideal body for her. A body that she loves and feels good in.

The anorexic needs to stop pleasing others. She needs to disappoint her mother. She needs to feel. She needs to reconnect with her senses. She needs to let go of ideals of being good and perfect and stop using her spirit to judge her body. Encourage her desire to be physical and human with all her human frailties and imperfections.

Again, if you talk to her about the disorder, you will lose her. Forget target weights and condemnation of her rituals and ideals. Introduce the concept that she deserves love and attention just for being alive, even if she were not so smart and not so accomplished. Discuss an assignment where she can purposely disappoint her parents (law of reverse action).

NEW TECHNIQUES

The New Energy Psychology Method:
The Perfect Complement to Hypnotherapy
by Gayle North, Positive Change Coach of Success Strategies in Bigfork, Montana

This article is dedicated to Dr. Stephanie Jourdan , my beautiful loving teacher who has encouraged me to develop my skills and intuition and has been a wonderful model for me as I move deeper into my work receiving more and more joy and satisfaction from it.

After completing all of the courses with Stephanie in 1997, I certified in NLP, and Joy of Learning. I always want to learn more about anything that might help me get faster, more lasting results. In the last two years, I have been combining hypnotherapy with EFT, BSFF bringing the success rate to close to 100%. You may already be familiar with these acronyms. if not, stand by and get ready for an overview of these fascinating positive change tools.

EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and BSFF (Be Set Free Fast) are science fiction level empowerment technologies that allow us take people into a light trance state to “de fragment” past experience. These methods allow us to “clear the slate”, so to speak. Using these methods, we release old emotional patterns so that our guided hypnotherapy takes full effect without resistance.

In the past, I noticed that hypnosis would change unwanted behaviors and thought patterns and then some clients seemed to regress back to the old pattern over time. My theory is that we were trying to override the old pattern with a new more desirable one.

When we clear emotional resonance with past experience using EFT, BSFF, TAT, etc, we do not have to “override old patterns.” They are already released and the client”s whole being is now ready for the positive change.

My first introduction to the field of Energy Psychology was a course taught by Don Blackerby: “The Joy of Learning,” two years ago. www.nlpok.com. Dr. Blackerby introduced EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) as a fast and easy way to help students get over the emotional wounds from past traumas that keep them stuck in old limiting beliefs about themselves or keep them distracted and unable to focus on learning. The students I worked with during the course had instant results.

Just before I left for Oklahoma City to take the two week course, my husband announced that he wanted a divorce. While I was there, I received phone messages from him that upset me at a 10 level on a scale of 1 to10. Without the help of a couple from Texas who were both hypnotherapists and experts with EFT, I would not have been able to concentrate and I would probably have left. Each time I experienced a new upset, these wonderful therapists assisted me in clearing the upset and I completed the course. EFT was the main tool I used to get through the challenges related to the divorce. It made it possible for me to remain calm and resourceful enough to work during the divorce process.

When I returned to my practice, I began to use EFT with my clients.

The Background

Most of the of the new energy psychology methods are based upon the work of Dr Roger Callahan. Dr. Callahan had been working with a client who had a phobia of water. When Dr. Callahan began working with this woman, she could not be in the vicinity of a pool or the ocean. Later, when she could tolerate being closer to water, she came to his home in Malibu so they could work beside his swimming pool.

Dr. Callahan had been taking an applied kinesiology course. One day while working with the client, he was impressed to tap lightly under the eye as they focused upon her fear. She immediately exclaimed that “it,” the fear, was all gone and she ran for the pool and got in to demonstrate to Dr. Callahan that she was now comfortable in the water. This experience led to more experimentation and research and Dr. Callahan discovered that tapping the body in specific places while focusing on the presenting problem seemed to release the problem. Dr. Callahan had discovered what he later named “Thought Field Therapy.” He developed many algorithms of tapping designed to release old patterns of fear, self doubt, post traumatic stress syndrome ? even stress related physical symptoms like headaches, etc.

Of course, Dr. Callahan was initially ostracized from his professional associations, as innovators in the healing professions often are, but he began teaching his methods to others and several spin-offs of Thought Field Therapy came on to the scene. In my experience, these new energy methods are the perfect compliment to hypnotherapy.

Psychological Reversal (PR)

Dr. Callahan conceived Psychological Reversal which refers to a resistant state of energy or state of the subconscious mind that causes a person to relapse, sabotage the self or resist any form of treatment, change, or progress. The theory is that when we are in a state of Psychological Reversal, no treatment will work no matter how hard we try, how good the practitioner is, or how willing we think we are to make changes.

EFT and BSFF techniques correct Psychological Reversal so that the entire being can come into alignment with the healing process. After correcting the PR, one is also more motivated to stay on a healing program that might include other changes necessary for that individual to realize the outcome they desire ? this might include diet, exercise, meditation, etc.

EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) was developed by Gary Craig, who is not a therapist at all, but an engineer by education who studied with Dr Callahan. Gary Craig streamlined the many Callahan algorithms into one simple all-purpose universal algorithm that includes tapping on every energy meridian. It seems to be just as effective as the more complicated protocols of Dr. Callahan. You can learn EFT from CDs and DVDs available at www.emofree.com.

The theory behind EFT is that old negative patterns of emotional response and behaviors get stuck in the energy system of the body in the meridians. By tapping on the meridians while focusing on the problem, the block, or stuckness is removed and the pattern is released.

One of the first clients I used EFT with had a problem with alcohol. He had worked with me for several sessions to clear some old childhood emotional issues and one day announced that he was ready to focus on the drinking problem. His wife of twenty plus years had already left him because of it. He is a contractor and told me that his cravings were the strongest after work. He carried an ice chest full of beer in his truck and looked forward to opening an ice cold beer (or several) to relax after a hard day.

I suggested that he bring his cooler with five of his favorite kinds of beer, to my office for his next session. He was there at 4:30 and we began an experiment using EFT. I poured one of the beers in a cup and had Bob smell it. I asked him to tell me how much he wanted to drink it on a scale of 0 to10. He said his desire was at a “9+.” We did the EFT tapping routine and with each round of tapping his desire came down until after four or five rounds, his desire was below zero and he said that the beer actually smelled awful to him. He told me I could pour it out. I was intrigued with the quick change from a” 9+” to a “0.” I poured the second brand of beer in a cup and asked Bob to smell it notice the level of his desire to drink it. It was about a “5”. We tapped a few rounds and got the same results. I opened the third brand of beer. This time his desire was at about a “2.” We tapped again and the same thing happened. I opened the fourth brand of beer. This time his desire was very low. He said that he could take or leave it and the desire was at about a “1.”

Now I was getting excited – like a scientist on the brink of a new discovery. This seemed to be an instant craving buster! We tapped again and the same thing happened. When I picked up the fifth brand of beer to open it, Bob told me not to open it. He said it would be a waste of a beer since he could not stand the thought of even smelling it. Bob quit drinking that day and began going to AA meetings and tapping for his cravings when they came up. We continued to clear other issues that caused the anxieties that made him want to use alcohol.

The EFT gave Bob the impetus he needed to get disassociated from his cravings for alcohol. EFT works in the same way with other cravings for cigarettes, chocolate, overeating, etc. I call EFT “the craving buster” and teach it to all of my clients. I now give them all homework to do between sessions. They are asked to “tap” on various aspects of their specific issues and to do the PR correction daily until the new patterns become natural.

Basic EFT is easy to learn and with experience one can become an artist with it. EFT is also effective in group settings.

BSFF (BE SET FREE FAST)

BSFF (Be Set Free Fast) is another method that spun off from Thought Field Therapy by Dr Callahan. BSFF was developed by Dr. Larry Nims, a psychologist for over 30 years who also happens to be a fundamental Christian minister. Dr. Nims latest protocol, Instant BSFF, simplifies Thought Field Therapy even further by eliminating most of the tapping and relying on the power of the subconscious mind to eliminate problems. Find out more about BSFF at www.besetfreefast.com.

BSFF has some advantages in that it can be done silently while one is in public or in any situation where emotional clearing is needed and taping would be inappropriate. It is truly science fiction problem solving from my perspective. To get started with BSFF, we give two pages of instructions to the subconscious mind telling it how we want it to handle any problem we focus on. The client chooses a cue word or phrase which will become the cue for the subconscious mind to eliminate any problem we notice and intend to eliminate.

Instruct my clients to remain quiet after giving their cue and to notice what comes to them in the form of recollections or memories, body sensations, words, thoughts, etc. Sometimes the problem is immediately eliminated and sometimes the client will recall a past experience related to the problem and we treat for all negative patterns created by that experience. Sometimes there are several memories, feelings, etc related to the problem and we treat all of them.

Clients describe a variety experiences during the process like sensing a wave action as if they were near the ocean or in a forest of trees swaying in the breeze. Sometimes they describe pulsing color or light, or see flowers, butterflies and other creatures. Sometimes they describe cartoon or other characters that come into their consciousness with messages. Anger toward others and self is treated and then a forgiveness process completes the BSFF protocol.

I remain constantly fascinated with my own experience as my clients share personal images and impressions with me. I am in awe and deeply appreciate the emerging of these tools. The only problem with EFT and BSFF is that the results are sometimes so fast and produce such permanent and thorough results that it is beyond the belief system of most people. It is okay for people to remain skeptical about the methods and we treat for the all the personal doubts related to being able to change, etc.

TAT (Tapas Acupressure Technique) is another new method that releases allergies, trauma, fear, etc. More information is available at www.tat-intl.com.

I use all of these methods in combination with hypnotherapy and the combination has increased my effectiveness beyond anything I would have thought possible in the past. I encourage you to check out all of these methods and order the video tapes for learning them. Find additional resources at www.risingsunhealing.com , www.caroltuttle.com , www.pcarrington.com , www.eftdownunder.com

If you would like to experience any of these methods to resolve your own personal issues, feel free to call me for a phone session. These methods are just as effective on the phone as in person.

Gayle North is a Positive Change Coach using new empowerment technologies that make it easier than ever before to be slim, be free of addictions, adopt a more joyous self image, have freedom from worry/grief, improve performance in school, sports, relationships, etc. Call Success Strategies in Bigfork, MT. (406) 837-1214 for individual coaching in person or by phone. e-mail changeiseasy@montanasky.net read articles at www.gaylenorth.com .EFT

BODY SYNDROMES

Using the Body Syndrome Theory in Hypnotherapyby Stephanie Jourdan, Ph.D.————————————————————————————————————————–

The body syndrome theory postulates that modern people have adapted to their computer-paced lives to the extent that it feels natural to push through trauma. Consequently, it is no longer instinctual or even a priority to set time aside to feel all of the feelings of the day’s upsets and stresses. Many patients report an inability to feel or even recognize their feelings. These individuals have learned to rationalize their traumas, including rejection, cruelty, death, and fear.

Medical hypnotherapy has always been concerned with enhancing patients’ awareness as to how they respond to stress, both mild and severe. The body syndrome theory goes one step further and correlates how the body stores the cellular memory of repressed stress, and especially trauma, within the physical body. these correlations can be used as direct suggestions for the patient to age regress to the very first time conditions existed predisposing the current chronic ailment.

The body syndromes are:

Crying syndrome: the subject repressed significant sadness accompanied by a belief that it was not safe to express that sadness. Oftentimes, the original event causing the subject to repress the sadness also caused him or her to believe he could not make a decision s/he needed to make.

For example, a woman with unrelenting migraine headaches was age regressed to the very first time she was unable to safely feel the sadness in her life. She immediately remembered the time when her dog died when she was three years old. Her dad was returning from the dog groomer’s with the poodle in the passenger seat. He was about to turn left into the driveway and had paused to let an oncoming car pass. The pet poodle saw the little girl in the front yard and jumped over the dad, through the window, into the path of the oncoming car. She witnessed her pet’s death and was wailing in agony. Her father, filled with guilt, became agitated by her grief, and told her to stop crying as it was only making matters worse. She continued to cry and he resorted to that old 50’s threat, “stop crying or I’ll really give you something to cry about!”

In her fear, she stiffly inhaled her sadness. Her mom then explained that it was pepper’s time to go … God wanted him and so he had to go.” Her mind now filled with images of God taking her the same way and a belief that she has no power in deciding what she is allowed to feel bad about because her mom is telling her she should be happy that pepper is with God now.

Crying syndrome encompasses the head, neck, chest and breasts and all the organs contained therein. Chronic ailments such as headaches, sinusitis, eczema, sore throats, asthma, or TMJ, may respond better to medication when hypnotherapy is employed with suggestions to regress to overwhelming sadness.

Atlas syndrome: the subject repressed the natural inclinations towards fun and frivolity and instead assumed an identity of seriousness and extreme responsibility or took on the belief that s/he could not handle responsibility and assumed an identity as a worrier and fretter.

Atlas syndrome encompasses the back from the waist up and the shoulders. Patients complaining of chronic back and shoulder pain should be regressed with hypnotic suggestions to return to the very first time that they formed the belief that they had to accept responsibility that didn’t belong to them or the formation of the belief that they were incapable of coping with responsibility for themselves.

Reaching syndrome: the patient has repressed the instinct to reach out and take what she needs and instead emotionally withdraws when what s/he needs is not offered. A belief was created in his or her past that he or she is not really entitled to have his/her needs met.

Frustration and guilt syndrome: the subject has repressed feelings of frustration, anger, resentment, sexual acceptance, and/or self-acceptance. Often s/he grew up in a home where anger was unacceptable or sex was never discussed.

Frustration and guilt syndrome encompasses the torso from the waist down to mid-thigh. The repression of frustration and guilt may manifest in conditions of gastrointestinal disorders, such as ulcers or irritable bowel syndrome, disproportional fat accumulation, reproductive disorders, diabetes, sciatica, hip bursitis, etc.

Flight syndrome: patient has repressed the need to walk away from threatening or unhealthy situations or people. often created in early childhood during times of discipline. The mind is signaling danger (a threatening lecture, spanking, beating, etc.) and is unable to escape because survival is dependent upon the origin of the danger. In other words, mom or dad is saying, “You just stand right here young man (or lady) until I am done taking to you. This is going to hurt me more than you.” The parent is the origin of the danger and the child can not escape because s/he is dependent upon that parent for survival.

Flight syndrome encompasses the legs from the mid-thigh down to the feet and toes and includes chronic complaints, such as knee/ankle/foot tendonitis/bursitis, varicose veins, bunions, hammer toes, fallen arches, etc.

Regression includes:

1. identifying the original trauma and the time of its onset.

2. identifying the belief(s) the client formed about him- or herself as a result.

3. enabling the client to sense the impact of that belief.

4. enabling the client to identify the truth about the event as perceived by his or her adult mind.

5. enabling the client to feel his or her stored feelings.

6. guiding the client to ask the affected part of the body for an image that would permit the release of the trauma.

7. offering the client suggestions for comfort and ease in that area of the body while preserving any signaling function of pain.

HERPES

Treating Genital Herpes with Hypnotic Imagery

“I was struck by seeing two serpents in the center of the virus surrounded by what appears to be an impregnable fortress of symmetrically placed cells,” wrote Gerald Epstein, M.D. in his breakthrough medical visualization book, Healing Visualizations: Creating Health Through Imagery published in 1989 by Bantam.

Dr. Epstein advises his patients suffering from chronic herpes to embark upon an imagined snake hunt to drive the snakelike herpes virus out of their bodies. Since the herpes virus is a cousin of the AIDS virus, he recommends this approach for AIDS patients as well.

I have had considerable success with Dr. Epstein’s snake hunt imagery. Many times, the client presents a condition that appears to go into total remission, even after years of on-going misery.

About ten years ago I had a sudden impulse to change the imagery for a particular client. I had seen her a few times for the treatment of herpes, yet the imagery was not kicking in. She was particularly fearful of snakes and I contemplated doing a desensitization process first just on the snakes, but at last minute I switched to the following concept of the snake imagery and it worked. I have since found that it works well for most herpes sufferers.

When using the following imagery, stress to your client that he imagine himself in his body in the imagery. This seems to bridge the imagination to the body so that the imagined changes create actual physiological changes. *Help your client to feel a sense of lightness by including a passive progressive relaxation, i.e., your right foot feels light and relaxed, your right leg feels light and relaxed, your left foot feels light and relaxed, etc.

Snake Pit Imagery

Imagine lying in some soft, lush, tall green grass near a large pit. Notice your surroundings, the weather, the time of day, and the sounds. Allow yourself to feel very light as you lie so very comfortably in the clean, soft grass. Now that you have allowed yourself to feel so relaxed … so light … it is easy for you to imagine floating above the pit in a sitting position. And now you can float down into the adjacent pit with every exhalation until you find yourself coming to a gentle landing on your feet at the bottom of the pit.

There is a boulder next to you. Imagine taking a seat on it. Now allow yourself to feel the weight of your body. And as you become more aware of your body, you can wonder what it might feel like to become a big snake peacefully resting here so very comfortably at the bottom of this pit. As your eyes become more accustomed to this environment, you are aware of how inviting it is … the pit opens up on either side to reveal an underground oasis. Feeling safe, you can now pretend that you are a big snake resting in the light.

And now it’s time to investigate your surroundings. And even though you are just pretending, you may have noticed that your senses of hearing and smell have been enhanced. You can hear sounds of an underground stream. You can smell the fresh, damp earth. Feel the strength and power in your body as you slither into the inviting darkness. Notice how conducive the pit is for relaxation. And notice how safe you feel as a snake, especially as a big snake.

Now that your eyes have adjusted to the darkness, you are aware of the stream and you slither to its watery embankment. There are many tiny snakes that are swimming in the stream. Send a thought into the stream that you want to talk to their leader. Coil back from the stream and wait for the arrival of the old, wise one. Nod when he arrives.

Ask the leader what he wants you to understand about being a snake. Let him teach you about slithering and coiling, about the important of focus and survival. Ask him about the meaning of life … of sex … and death. Ask him what his purpose is and whether there is anything that he needs from you. IF he does need something from you, ask him how you can give this to him. What’s the very first step you must take?

Help your client to identify how to go about giving the snake what he needs. For instance, if the snake says, I need you to trust me, then the client should ask the snake how he could demonstrate trust to him. If the snake replies, wrap me around your neck, then the client can visualize doing this. If the snake replies, think the way I think, this is too vague for the client. He must ask the snake for help. What is my first lesson in learning the ways of the snake? The snake may say something outrageous, such as wanting to bite the client on the finger, and it will be up to the client whether to accept the request or to negotiate. The time will come when the client has learned all of the snake’s teachings. This may take several sessions.

Now it is time for the client to ask the snake to honor his request, which is that he and the other snakes (that represent the virus) evolve from their physical form into a light form.

The leader may have a counter request that the client will need to follow to the letter. If so, assist the client in creating a plan or program to accomplish this goal.

Use your preferred regression technique to direct the client’s unconscious back to the moment that caused the resultant entry of the herpes virus.

Once you have regressed your client to the original event that created the need for experience of the virus, you can use these key questions for transformation:

1) Ask the part of you that knows, what is the most important aspect of what you are remembering?
2) What did this experience cause you to believe about yourself?
3) What decision did you make as a result of this experience?
4) How is that decision still impacting you?
5) Ask the part of you that knows, what was the spiritual purpose of the experience?
6) Ask the part of you that knows for an image that you can focus upon right now that will release the trauma.

Ask your client how he would know when all evidence of the virus has vanished. Then ask him to pick a date that he would like to experience the complete release of the virus. Solicit all the details of a moment on that date when he has that realization that herpes is a condition he once experienced as part of his past that gave him some valuable insights into himself and life. Progress him into the future to that date and read back the client’s description of what it will be like when the virus is no longer physical. Have him nod when he can fully imagine this and the suggest that since this newly formed and anticipated experience is now the path of least resistance, he can allow himself to feel joyful and grateful that he has now done the work that will manifest in the virus evolving out of his body. The count him out.

FREE ASSOCIATION

Freud, Free Association, and Hypnotherapy

Sigismund (subsequently shortened to Sigmund in 1877) Schlomo Freud (1856 – 1939), was the Austrian physician, neurologist, and founder of psychoanalysis. His family called him Sigi. He was the first-born of eight. His mother was his father?s third wife. She was about twenty years younger than his father. He had two half-brothers that were close in age to his mother, which may have fueled some of his Oedipus Complex theories. This theory contends that all little boys are instinctually driven to want to have sex with their mothers and that they want to kill their fathers to get them out of the way. His other theory, the Castration Complex, is the fear on the part of the little boys that when their fathers find out their desires, they will cut off their sons? penises. At eight years old, he started reading Shakespeare.

In 1885, Freud moved to Paris so that he could study the work of the famous neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot at the Salpetriere. Charcot, was helping the blind and paralyzed to see and walk again. He worked with patients who had no physiological defects and so he assumed their maladies were a dysfunction of their brain. He freed his patients from their handicaps through the use of hypnosis.

The next year, in 1886, Freud married and set up a private practice for himself in Vienna. One of his tools for the treatment of his patients was hypnosis, wherein he would guide the patient to recall and revisit repressed memories. He called his style of hypnotherapy the Cathartic Method. When the medical authorities caught wind that he was practicing the unorthodox techniques of Charcot, they threatened to deny recognition of his working on finding the origin of neurosis. Freud stopped supporting Charcot and publicly stated that hypnosis was too fallible to rely upon and that his patients could just as effectively recall key memories consciously.

Freud named one of his memory gathering techniques free association in 1896. He offered his patient a word, who in return would respond with whatever thought came into his mind, no matter how threatening or embarrassing. It was assumed at the time that all memories are arranged in a single associative network and that the key memories would pop up eventually with continued probing.

By 1910, Freud had gained international recognition. Freud discovered that he had cancer of the mouth and jaw in 1923. He braved 33 surgeries that we might find barbaric and continued to work until he died at 83 years old. Despite the cancer, he never stopped smoking his beloved cigars.

You can employ the same free association principles of Freud in these exercises. I have laid out the five steps to follow.

1. Ask your client to write down what he wants. It should be in the form of a simple sentence, i.e., “I want to be rich,” or “I want to be happy,” or “I want to be thin.”

2. Sit facing your client squarely. Look him directly in the eyes and ask, “What is another word for the word I?” Allow the response and ask again, “Another word for I?”

Continue to ask and allow responses until you see or sense evidence that the client has entered fight or flight, i.e., breathing changes, swallowing, eyelid flutter, movement of hands or feet. If there is a long hesitation after your question, ask your question again.

3. When you know that the client has gone into fight or flight, take the next answer for that word and move onto the next word in the original sentence that the client made up.

Continue with all of the words of the original sentence until you have key words for each.

4. Write the key words down on a piece of paper for the client to look at. When you have finished with all of the words, give the paper to the client and allow him to form a sentence using all of the words. He can add words, change tenses, and change the sequence, but he cannot delete any of the words.

5. After the client has created a sentence, he should give the paper back to you. Ask the client to close his eyes and allow his imagination to create an image in response to the sentence as you read it back.

6. After the client has described the image that he has received, tap the center of his forehead lightly a few times and suggest that he will now understand the best direction to pursue in hypnotherapy and wait for his answer.

Tapping the center of the forehead causes an automatic overload to the limbic system because you are stimulating the nerve network there.

Your client will tell you a response directly from his subconscious mind about what you need to do in hypnotherapy to enable him to fulfill his need or he will give you an indication of what the real issue is that needs to be addressed in future sessions.

SELF ESTEEM SCRIPT

Self Esteem Script

Imagine that you are dozing in a clean, dry sweet-smelling pasture. A tree provides sufficient shade and a cool breeze makes the warm day pleasant. Birds are singing. The grass is soft. Off in the distance you hear sounds of laughter coming from the town square. You get up to go check it out.

The center of town is now in sight and so is an enormous hot air balloon that everyone is very excited about. As you come closer, you notice that the balloon has been decorated to reflect your personality on one side and your life dreams on the other side.

A friend spots you approaching and leads a cheer. The townspeople rush over to you and hoist you to their shoulders. You are then carried to the balloon like a football hero. Gently, they help you to step inside the balloon. You notice that there is only space for you and the pilot. On cue, he arrives, gets in, and now you should give him a thumbs up signal for takeoff.

Now the ropes are being cut and your balloon floats upward revealing a panoramic view of the center of town and the park.

After a few minutes, the balloon seems to be hovering at the same height and the townsfolk are chanting, let a bag go!

Puzzled, you look over at the pilot. He points to one of the many bags loosely tethered to the inside of the basket. As you stoop down to pick up this large sandbag, you notice a word imprinted on its side: REGRET.

Lifting the sandbag all the way up to chest height, you hold it close to you and know that it is time to appreciate that its your mistakes and failures that have brought you this far in life. Without them, achievement would have been nothing more than dumb luck. The more you consider that all of your wisdom has come from your mistakes and failures, the better you feel about the choices that you have made along the way. After all, it took Edison more than 600 failures to get the light bulb to work.

The pilot hands you a pocket knife. You cut the tethers and pitch the sandbag over. The crowd cheers. The hot air balloon can now float up freely.

Take a deep breath and feel the lightness within. Look around and take in the view. When you are ready, move to the other side of the basket and stoop down to lift another, heavier sandbag labeled resentment. Hold it up on the ledge of the basket. Now lay your head on the bag and allow yourself to think about all the people in your life who have hurt you and the related pain that you have been carrying around. Ready? Push it off and watch it burst on the ground.

The balloon sails across the valley … the lake is now in sight. There are only two bags left. You can go higher and feel even more free if you let them go. You move towards another bag. It appears to be very heavy, as though it is full of sand and lead. You wonder how the balloon every took off with all this weight. The pilot comes over to assist you. Together you lift it and rest it on the ledge. IN dark, scribbled letters you read the words GUILT AND SHAME. No wonder it is so heavy. Ask yourself, ?has anything positive ever come from feeling guilty or ashamed?? Let your subconscious mind give you a word that will allow you to understand how you have been helped by guilt and shame. Nod when you know.

Now ask your subconscious mind why you needed to accomplish what you accomplished with guilt and shame in that manner. Are those factors still present in your life? If not, what is another way you could accomplish the same objective that the guilt and shame accomplished? Would that be acceptable to you? Great, throw the bag over.

Only one bag to go. You can read the letters from here: F-E-A-R. Of course, it would be the last bag. The pilot informs you that the balloon will really fly high if you can dump this one. Approach the sandbag. It is surprisingly light. You toss it over and feel a sense of light-headedness. Thoughts of what it would be like to lead your life as a fearless person consume your attention. Imagine all the ways your life could be different if you had no fear. The balloon is above the clouds now. You have done it.

When you are ready, slowly count backwards from ten to one. This will take you deeper and deeper. Give yourself a suggestion that you will enjoy your party as you speak further to your subconscious. Tell yourself that these releases are long lasting and permanent. Now tell yourself that you will awaken feeling lighter and more and more self-confident every day. Count forwards from one to five, knowing that at five you will open your eyes, feeling really good and refreshed.

MOVIE THERAPY

How going to the Movies subconsciously resolves your issues and improves your life

Movies can guide us home when we get lost. Skillful screen writers engage our psyches in the plight of the hero. When the journey of the hero matches our own, we solve our issues together as the movie concludes.

Being lost eventually leads somewhere. It drives us towards new avenues so we can surrender to the part of ourselves that knows how to get to the destination. Being lost is an important experience. It gets our attention through feelings of anxiety, frustration or depression. Our soul is speaking to us about what is not working so that we can get back on track. When weпїЅre lost, weпїЅre actually at a crossroads.

Think back to times when you were lost. What happened? You realized something was not right. You realized that you needed help seeing the path.

I got lost in a marriage. I left home too early. I lied about my age to get a decent job. I celebrated my 21st birthday at work when I was 17 … I was so nervous that my coworkers would want to take me out for a drink and I would be asked for my ID.

By the time I was 19 I thought I was older because my co-workers were all getting married. I felt I needed to get married. No sooner had I made the decision, an older man pursued me, proposed, and we moved away from all I knew. Not that far away mind you … about a hundred miles. I left my hometown city of San Diego and moved to Los Angeles.

Sadly, my new husband became my new enemy.

Ray had been discharged from the army for reasons of mental instability. His mother had been committed to an asylum for shock therapy when he was a boy. His older brother acted as his parent and social services were never the wiser. Ray was terrified of abandonment and really angry with women. Every day was a new war … with me.

I was permitted one friendship by telephone. My husband didnпїЅt object because my friend was gay. Mark was living his dream as an international flight attendant. He had expanded his world and gotten some wisdom. Mark invited himself for the weekend. He never made it past the first night though. He could not stomach who I had become or rather, who I was not anymore. He took the red-eye home-bound for New York.

Had I been in movie therapy, my therapist might have recommended The Matrix so that I could see that I was buying into someone elseпїЅs reality: my husbandпїЅs.

Mark was my guide. He called me every work-day from wherever he was in the world until I filed for divorce. Mark was Morpheus. He pushed my liberation from a twisted, draining perception of reality so I could be born as my true self.

Had I seen The Matrix in 1977 through some sort of time travel, I might have awakened. It became really apparent that I was arguing with insanity when Ray began yelling at me as though I was his deceased mother still incarnate. I was lucky to have a real life guide appear when I needed one.

When we are lost, we need a guide. In an ideal life scenario, a teacher appears in the way Mark appeared for me or how Obi Wan Kenobi appeared for Luke Skywalker. If you do not have such a friend or uncle, you can still get guidance in the tradition of all great peoples … from a story about someone like you who finds his way.

Wisdom always exists. It always has and it always will. Wisdom is the incredible intelligence that creates universes, monkeys, and bananas. It is undeniably present. Obviously nothing exists without it. It predates humanity. It is as powerful as our own bodies and as present as the atmosphere.

Joseph Campbell, (1904 – 1987), professor, writer, and lecturer, famous for his research and writings in the fields of comparative mythology, was awestruck by the common themes of all peoples around the world.

Campbell got an early start. When he was seven, his dad took him to see The Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. Thus began his obsession: when he was not at the library, he was at the natural history museum. By the time he was ten, he had read everything on Indian lore for children at his local library, so he started in on the adult section. His studies gave him an interesting combination of folklore and modern morality as they rested side-by-side with his Catholic upbringing. He fully-embraced his Irish Catholic heritage with all its traditions and rituals well into his twenties.

In college, Campbell majored in medieval literature. He was a brilliant teacher, editor and writer about mythology … perhaps the most remarkable because he made it so accessible to the public.

He was credited with owning one of the most extensive collections of tarot decks or their equivalents from around the world.

Campbell wrote about how every primal culture had a set of images that captured their values and how the images were similar no matter where you went in the world. He theorized that all of the myths of the world are creations of the human psyche. He saw the artists of a culture as its mythic generators.

And every culture uses myth and folk stories to explain psychology, society, the cosmos, and why we are here.

Wisdom yearns to create and express itself wherever there are artists willing to give it life. Even the natives of the most remote island would tell their children mythical stories of creation, heroics, beauty, magic, punishment, and reward.

These commonalities that all ancient peoples shared that have been passed on to our modern day existence influence our behaviors and choices. These ancient influences stimulate who we are as humanity. They are not only primal, they are cosmic.

This body of primal energies are what Dr. Carl Jung (1875 – 1961), father of analytical psychology, labeled the collective unconscious.

When we personally repress one of these primal energies, or live in a society that represses one of these energies, we fall out of balance and make decisions that further throw our beings and lives askew. When we restore the primal energy to a pure state by recognizing it for what it really is, we come back into balance and make decisions and display behaviors that make us happy, healthy, successful, and free.

One such primal energy is aggression. In its pure form, aggression shows up as the heroic warrior who fights to retrieve something precious or protects the innocent.

In its repressed form, it is the righteous warrior who violently kills to preserve his idea of a perfect world. Trouble is, it is an ideal borne of his ego,

Dr. Jung named these primal energies пїЅarchetypes.пїЅ The collective unconscious is comprised of archetypes. As the collective unconscious expresses itself, it does so through archetypes.

The word archetype comes from two Greek words: arche, which means first, and type, which means imprint or pattern.

Jung was not the first with this concept, but he was the first to coin the idea.

Two-thousand plus years earlier, Plato taught that there are primal forms within the Divine mind. These forms were his idea that everything falls into a primal category.

For instance, as any teenager will tell you, sex changes everything. Therefore, everything sexual would fall under the Divine category of transformation, as would the other transitions of life, i.e., puberty, birth, menopause, and death.

Another category is beauty, which includes everything spurred from an intention of beauty. The ancient Greeks conceived Aphrodite as their primal form that represents beauty, but she is still very much alive in the shops of Rodeo Drive and in the leading ladies of stage and film.

Archetypes crystallize into our own unique expression the moment we first become conscious as a physical being. Some archetypal philosophers believe we inherit them the same way we unconsciously inherit brown eyes or curly hair. They are the life force that express oneпїЅs soul in the same way that DNA constructs your body.

And just as DNA continually regenerates our physical being as we evolve, archetypes continually regenerate patterns of behavior as we psychologically evolve.

As the part of the collective unconscious that lives inside us, archetypes also live all around us as the rest of the collective unconscious. In other words, all the archetypes comprise God, which is our soul, other souls, and the world we live in.

Inside, you meet them in your dreams. Outside, you meet them at work, school, church or temple, neighborhood, parties, in books, TV shows, myths, and movies.

The archetypes you are comfortable with, you express as part of your personality and the ones that you are uncomfortable with, you repress into your alter ego. Since they insist that you acknowledge them, they draw people into your life that strongly express your repressed aspects so that you can still experience those primal energies.

The movies are our modern-day means of connecting to the experiences and the inherent wisdom of the people in the world. Movies carry our cultural myths that help us to put life into perspective.

Movie theaters are the shuttles into outer space into the farthest reaches of our cosmic consciousness as a species.

Because movies are conceived within the fertile beds of imagination, they perfectly reflect our reality. All of the elements of outer world reality are depicted in film reality. Here we find our teachers. The key is to identify the forks in the road. Start by identifying your path.

The various personality typing methods identify sets of themes, just as movies fall into different categories. Once you know your theme, you know your path. Once you know your path, you can rest assured that others have been stuck at the same points you have encountered and have written scripts about it.

These writers become your teachers as you witness their stories or the stories their souls have accessed through their imaginations.

The best part is that you stimulate your growth and evolution by going to the movies.

Watching a movie in a theater differs from watching a movie on your television at home. The movie theater captures the ingredients of an altered state that enables psychological processing.

Going to the movies is hypnotic, except that it is an externally-fabricated state-of-mind.

In hypnosis, the subject closes his eyes to achieve a state of darkness in order to see internal images that will stir his imagination and act as a catalyst for change upon his subconscious mind.

At the movies, the viewer is subjected to a state of darkness in order to see external images that will stir his imagination and act as a catalyst for change upon his subconscious mind.

It has been proved in hypnosis that the subconscious mind does not register the difference between actual experience and properly-imagined experience. Proper in the sense that the hypnotized subjectпїЅs subconscious mind believes the imagined experience is real.

How does that happen? There has to be sufficient sensory stimuli to make the mind believe it is actually having an experience.

Hypnotherapy typically offers several types of sensory input to the hypnotized subject, along with a suggestion that stimulates an emotional reaction, so that the subject imagines the desired experience as real.

The hypnotherapist describes a scene that the subject can imagine seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, or feeling.

This is even more easily created in filmmaking. In fact, it is nearly impossible to have fewer than two types of sensory input as viewers are automatically exposed to visuals and sounds as part of watching the movie. And whose mouth didnпїЅt water while watching the meal preparation in Tortilla Soup or find their appetite stimulated during the sensual chocolate scenes in Chocolate?

All that is needed is an emotional reaction that relates to your life and your mind will believe that you are actually having a new experience.

Movie therapy works because the act of being in a movie theater simulates entering the unconscious: the dark unknown that focuses upon projected images.

I have assigned movie therapy issues and correlative plots to twelve different categories.

1) The individual who has lost touch with what his heart desires. I suggest he watch romantic movies and movies about how failure leads to success, such as Bring It On, Liar, Liar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Mr. Deeds, How to Lose A Man in Ten Days, Bruce Almighty, Cry Baby, The Majestic, and Catch Me If You Can.

2) People obsessed with what they perceive is missing that would make life meaningful. Use movies that show how to put ideas and ideals into reality, such as Nick Bottom in Midsummers Night Dream, Serendipity, Gone with the Wind, Mrs. Doubtfire, and The Whole Nine Yards.

3) Individuals that are so shut down from abuse or pain they fear intimacy. Recommend movies showing a life made rich and full by risking rejection, such as Gracie Hart in Miss Congeniality, and Cameron Frye in Ferris Buellers Day Off.

4) Unsung heroes, neurotics, cynics, and phobics need movies that teach how the return of something precious is worth the risk of death or loss of reputation (can also be an ego death), such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dr. John Mickler of Don Juan de Marco, Moonstruck, Missy in Bring It On, Tucker, The King and I, French Kiss, and The Muse.

5) For clients that are always searching for something new because of a fear of commitment and avoidance of emotional pain, recommend movies that show the joys of a simple life and that there is no perfect choice, such as SomethingпїЅs Gotta Give, As Good As It Gets, Terms of Endearment, Ketcher Block in Down with Love, Two Weeks Notice, What Women Want, and Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady.

6) Issues of vulnerability … the individual wonпїЅt allow himself to cry, feel regret, pity, sadness, or loss, but instead stays in power or bullies others. He needs movies that show how a person becomes truly great by embracing vulnerability and sensitivity, such as Fight Club, Wall Street, Scarface, and Danny in Grease.

7) People who sacrifice their dreams to hold their family together or who will do anything just to have some peace and quiet should watch movies that show the power of standing up for oneпїЅs self, such as Norma Rae, Hugh Grant in Love Actually, and Me Myself and Irene.

8) The client so focused on doing the right thing that he is missing fun should watch movies that show how the old model of being perfect is no longer working, such as Bennie and Joon, Ten Things I Hate About You, Keeping the Faith, and WhatпїЅs Eating Gilbert Grape.

9) Individuals who have diminished themselves in service to someone else can find empowerment in movies that show how the person who has found pride in being the power behind the throne can now step up into power for him or herself. Recommend Tootsie, Sabrina, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Beauty and the Beast, The First Wives Club, Snow White, Legally Blonde, and Fried Green Tomatoes.

10) Those with the Peter Pan syndrome … the puers who fear that growing up means the end of everything magical in the world … benefit from seeing how the misfit has a unique place in the world, such as in The Grinch, Shine, The Man Who Cried (Suzy), Chocolate, Romy and MichelleпїЅs High School Reunion, Edward Scissorhands, Amadeus, A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia, and The Shining.

11) For clients who are coping with extreme sensitivity through some sort of an addiction, I recommend movies that show the importance of being in body and relating to this world, such as Leaving Las Vegas, Postcards from the Edge, The Doors, and Jackson Pollock.

Help your client identify his dominant life theme category. After he has viewed the movie, the two of you can discuss the character that was most transformed or healed. Guide your client to hear the message imparted by the screenwriter and then identify a means for him to integrate that message into his life. I use these nine questions:

1) At what point in the movie did I feel the most uncomfortable?

2) When was the first time I felt that kind of emotion?

3) What was going on in my life at that age?

4) Was there a specific, upsetting, incident?

5) What decisions did I likely make as a result?

6) How did that decision help me at the time?

7) Does it help me or hinder me now?

8) If I look at that part of my life as a part of a movie, and myself as a character in that movie, why did the character need that experience for his development?

9) What would happen if I replaced that decision with a new decision?

It is easy to miss important details when we see a complex movie for the first time. The second time we see it, we become aware of the subtleties. We are able to relax and really enjoy the movie.

If we choose to see life as a movie, we can identify the central myth we are enacting. Owning our life in this way, we can elect ourselves producer of the movie. Now we have power as to whether the movie follows the story line and how the star plays out the plot. We might decide that the role of the star needs to be rewritten to reflect more self-understanding and minimal victimization.

Every life has a story. Some are more dramatic than others, but each person lives his story.

When you listen to an old person tell his story, you hear the purpose of his life. He is old enough to see the whole tale. A lot of the time he tells you that it did not turn out the way he thought it would, but it turned out for the best.

Sometimes he tells you of the opportunities he did not see and bemoans his deepest regrets.

Sometimes an individual recognizes his life theme early on and everything goes according to plan just as he anticipated it would.

Imagine having a conversation with your 90-year-old self when you turned 30. You could find out how the 90-year-old self is doing. If content, you could rest assured that everything turns out okay. If unhappy, you could find out what happened and use that knowledge to pick a different path at the forks in the future.

Let us assume your Higher Self picked a story that would best help you develop certain aspects of awareness through your experiences of life. Knowing the story now enables you to recognize the forks in the road and where each road leads so that you can fall into step with your the highest path of your soul.

Now you know what you need to grow and what you need to release.

This helps you identify your true teachers, friends, and occupation … and who is likely to tempt you off your true path.

I believe your soul already knows all of these answers. Most people felt some part of themselves screaming inside when they first stepped on the wrong path.

Our soul seems to communicate to us through our feelings and bodies … like the bride who stands at the altar with her stomach all in knots. She contemplates saying no. It is an exciting thought. She could be free. Then she thinks about all the people in the church. She convinces herself that it will be all right and if itпїЅs not, she will just get a divorce. She does not see that the altar is her fork in the road. She does not really check in with her feelings as to where each road will take her. Two babies later, it is obvious she has to leave to save her sanity. The experience has given her a lot of wisdom, but at a price.

Would she have chosen to marry this particular man had she known the myth that she was playing out? Probably not. (Her myth is Aphrodite Betrayed as illustrated in the Greek myth when Aphrodite consents to marry Hephastes to please Zeus.)

Had she known that the purpose of the relationship was to learn to be whole in who she was, she probably would have opted for awareness in a different way.

Our modern Aphrodite in our example chose instead to get to wholeness by sacrificing her power to her husband. She made him the keeper of might and wisdom. He accepted the responsibility of determining her worthiness because he felt worshiped by her and he enjoyed the additional power, but in the process he lost his respect for her. The power she gave him to make her his queen is now turned against her as she falls from grace.

Had she chosen to stay single until she knew herself better, she would have discovered her own inner power to declare herself a queen. Both roads lead to wholeness, but one is full of hardship and the other is full of joy. If we view her choices as two movies, the first is Michelle Pfeiffer in Married to the Mob and the second is Cher in Moonstruck.

If you happen to love counseling, movies and mythology, consider this rapidly growing sector of therapy.

~Copyright 2007

Stephanie Jourdan, Ph.D.

SUPER LEARNING

Using Super Learning everyday

A few months ago I realized I was in a rut with my hypnosis clients. I decided to make a list of all the hypnotherapy techniques I knew worked. I went through years of client files. I called some former clients to find out what had worked and what had failed. It became very apparent that the clients that I had taken the time to teach the Superlearning techniques and enforced homework had achieved impressive, long-term results.

Not only had their goals been realized, but they reported that overall their lives had improved and they attributed it to the hypnotherapy.

So here is what I have found to be the nine best techniques out of the Superlearning 2000 book in the order of value.

#5 Holding new input for a count of four seconds while stimulating the brain with nerves in the forefinger and thumb.

#6 Using a tuning fork to clear past trauma in the throat.

#7 Brain balancing with nostril reverse.

#8 Infinity Walk.

#9 Associating suggestions with Baroque music.

Here is a little summary of each technique and the page in the book that explains it in more detail.

#1 The Mommy and I are One affirmation – page 54.

You ask your client to say this statement пїЅMommy and I are oneпїЅ out loud three times before offering new suggestions and/or imagery.

The suggestion is geared to undo the trauma of being born: leaving mommy and being vulnerable. The concept here is that the shock that we all go through at birth sets up a belief system in our subconscious minds that itпїЅs dangerous to leave one kind of experience and enter a new kind of experience. This belief becomes a major obstacle for us when we want to change our lives for the better.

The idea of being one with mommy gives us a core feeling of being safe and cared for.

And guess what, the clients who have the most issues with their mothers get the greatest benefits. And if you are thinking you will make it easier on your clients by using mom or mother instead of mommy, testing shows that mommy is the primal trigger we need.

The concept goes another step further. Whatever the client is wanting to incorporate into his life gets put into a mommy-type statement. The idea being that the reason he is struggling with adding this to his life is because he sees it as something outside of himself rather than something within himself that he has to make conscious. For instance, if a client wants to have the confidence for public speaking, you would have him repeat each of the following suggestions three times:

пїЅMommy and I are one.пїЅ

пїЅConfidence and I are one.пїЅ

пїЅPublic speaking and I are one.пїЅ

пїЅThe audience and I are one.пїЅ

I usually offer a little explanation to my client before asking him to repeat the affirmations.

I tell him about the research of the late Dr. Lloyd Silverman with 64 students who were given different affirmations to view through a tachistoscope (light device with an eyepiece that flashes the affirmation only long enough for subconscious registration). I enthusiastically announce that above and beyond all other affirmations, one awkward, embarrassing affirmation stood out as so successful that it was subsequently used in college settings with astounding results.

#2 Autogenics – page 66. It means self (auto) birthing (genics).

In the thirties Johannes Schultz, a German M.D., researched a technique he felt would be more effective than pills for teaching his patients how to relax so that healing could take place. He believed that his patientsпїЅ perception that they were powerless to the effects of stress, disease, accidents and all the demands of modern living was causing them to have lowered immune systems and greater susceptibility to damage from the blows of life.

He sought to develop a method where the patient could empower himself through the perception that he generates his own bodyпїЅs state of health as he creates it in every moment (pretty metaphysical for an M.D.) His research turned up a surprising fact: that no voice is as powerful as our own over the operation of our brain, except our parentsпїЅ voices. The reason being one of survival. Our brains are wired to respond to our childrenпїЅs voices, which are genetically similar to our own. We listen most openly and respond most fully to voices that are similar to our own. And NLP has certainly proved this to be true.

So, Dr. Schultz was struck by this and decided to have his patients teach their bodies to respond to their verbal commands. He instructed them to tell the various parts of their bodies to become either heavy or light … or warm or cool … or stimulated or numb.

His patients learned to relax at a very deep level. They practiced at home and learned to sleep on command as well.

During his research with them, the patients would do the work of telling their feet, legs, hands, arms, lower backs, stomachs, upper backs, lungs, hearts, necks, jaws, and foreheads to become heavy and relaxed. Then they would repeat the whole process and tell their body parts to become warm and relaxed, followed by light, then cool.

Once the patients had become well-conditioned to receiving instructions from themselves, Dr. Schultz would talk to them about controlling their bodies at will and creating states of health. Apparently the results were amazing.

#3 Using Lemon Essential Oil in Trance Work – page 161

Aromatherapy is the art and science of altering the chemistry of the brain via inhalation or absorption of essential oils.

Essential oils are primarily derived by distilling various parts of plants to release the essence of the plant as a vapor that then cools and condenses. This essence is then collected and bottled and distributed as essential oil.

Plants naturally release their essence whenever they are wounded or threatened, such as the threat of fire, as the essence is the plantпїЅs own natural immune provision to cope or heal from the effects of damage or stress. Essential oil in a plant is akin to blood in a human. All of the plantпїЅs vital resources are contained in the essence.

Although it is called essential oil, and despite its heavy, concentrated aroma, appearance and texture, it is wholly absorbed into the human body due to its molecular size and chemical composition, unlike conventional oil products.

It can even pass the blood-brain barrier due to the microscopic size of the molecules. As a result, its impact is immediate as the tiny molecules of essence travel up the nose and into the brain, into the amygdala gland.

It is now known that the amygdala gland is the seat of trauma in the brain, and can only be reached through aroma.

Aromatherapy enables your client to access his traumatic memories in a way that they can be processed and released, especially in a trance state.

Our sense of smell is ten thousand times more sensitive than our sense of taste. Our olfactory system may even contain more receptor cells than our eyes. Of all the five senses, the sense of smell has the most direct and expedient connection to the brain. For this reason, memory is most easily stimulated by smell.

This is evident when you use an essential oil, such as lemon, as a catalyst for age and past life regression.

It is also great for clients who need to be able to recall information, such as for a test or a performance. We store information according to the state we learn it in.

In your studies, you probably came across the topic of students who study while intoxicated that canпїЅt remember the information until they are once again intoxicated. Well, this is the same thing. Your client learns the new information or new behaviors while sniffing lemon (chocolate also works well, but not everyone wants to be salivating over chocolate) and then can recall it all again once he smells lemon again. In other words, you hold an open bottle of essential oil under the nose of your client when you introduce the new information or suggestions and then you sell him the bottle at the end of the session so that he can put a little on his hands before his presentation or exam. When he needs to recall the information, he just casually brushes his hand under his nose.

I got so into it that I came up with a line of neutral base products. I add my clientпїЅs favorite smell to a bottle of shampoo, conditioner, face cleanser and moisturizer … the same scent that I held under his or her nose during our trance work. That way the suggestions are reinforced every morning when he gets ready for work.

The essential oils are energetically encoded to restore an organismпїЅs balance, be it plant, animal, or human. This energetic or electrical frequency encoding works with the bodyпїЅs neuro (electrical) pathways … the bodyпїЅs meridian system as used in acupressure, acupuncture, reflexology, and other vibrational doctrines. That is why aromatherapy treats all levels of the being: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. For instance, smoking cessation is made easier by aligning the four bodies with inhalations of Neroli, Spruce, and Ylang Ylang essences.

Before introducing desired goals in the form of affirmations or imagery, it is much more effective to first guide the client to recall a few past experiences of joy and a few past accomplishments, be they large or small. It is more effective the further back in time the client can go.

There is a much greater portion dedicated to joy and satisfaction in the brain than there is pain and misery (well, thatпїЅs good news). When you activate a state of happiness in your client before offering new imagery, your client has more neuro-pathways available to store the new information in his brain – and more ways to retrieve it later.

#5 Holding new input for a count of four seconds while stimulating the brain with nerves in the forefinger and thumb – page 85.

There are more nerves dedicated to the brain in your fingers than any other body part outside the brain.

Memory research has shown that it takes four seconds of stimulation with new input to enable the new input access to long term memory.

When the client presses or rubs his forefinger and thumb together (same hand) for four seconds while you offer imagery and suggestions, it sends your words into long term memory. He rubs his fingers for four seconds while you speak, then you both pause for four seconds, then you speak for four seconds as he once again brings his fingers together, then you pause for four seconds.

You continue in this pattern until you have finished the suggestions, metaphor, imagery, input, etc.

#6 Using a tuning fork to clear past trauma – page 109.

So many people seem to have stuck trauma at the throat because they were silenced in childhood or some past lifetime.

I use a C sharp tuning fork (136 Hz) at the top center of the rib cage. I show the client how to hold the tuning fork, by the stem, so that his fingers donпїЅt interfere with the vibration. I instruct him to strike the fork on the arm of the chair (or another piece of upholstered furniture) and then hold the stem to his throat/chest as I offer suggestions. At the appropriate time, I suggest to him that it is safe to release his beliefs that he should not speak, cry, whine, scream, etc.

#7 Brain balancing with nostril reverse – page 218.

As we switch which nostril we breathe out of every ninety minutes or so throughout the day, we are either more connected with the right hemisphere (left nostril) or the left hemisphere of our brain.

According to Dr. Ernest Rossi, when we are breathing through our left nostril, we are on an inward cycle. Unfortunately, modern living causes us to override that cycle with our need to stay connected to the world in a linear way.

Dr. Rossi has found that when you switch to left nostril breathing, you are in an ideal state to let your brain solve your problems.

At the beginning of the inward breathing cycle, your client simply contemplates his issue for a moment, then just lazily drifts for a few minutes as you offer background chatter about the beauty of nature. Then bring him out and by the next appointment, he knows how to solve his problem.

I find intake goes along fine during right nostril breathing and my explanation of hypnosis. Then I have the client switch nostrils as I guide him into a trance state and introduce metaphoric imagery.

You can get the clientпїЅs nostrils to switch by having him lie down on his left side for a while so that the right hemisphere comes into dominance.

#8 Infinity Walk – page 75.

I have copied the following from the Superlearning website:

пїЅThe infinity walk derives from a fresh view of the mindbody connection. Our movements begin as one-dimensional unity in the womb to the three dimensional natural, sensual world. The world of symbols shapes a two-dimensional world of social symbols, language, reading, writing and figures. Making all these connections complicates life for some and creates life-long problems. Others perform so well they lose connectedness with the one or three dimensional world. The flow of peak performance springs from coordination of worlds with integrated circuits and brain rhythms.

“Dr. Deborah Sunbeck, the inventor of the Infinity Walk, checks the dominant representational systems of reality connections: visual, audio and feeling. Left or right? Eyes? Ears? Arms? Legs? Glitches in brain-body circuits can arise in all eight combinations: left and right combined with the three representational systems. The infinity walk releases those static enclosures and opens to optimal functioning.

пїЅHow simple can a technique be: walk a figure eight – the infinity symbol. Now ask yourself how did that feel? Were the loops balanced? Did you stare at the floor? Practice daily. Swing arms rhythmically from the shoulders, in sync with the opposite leg, shoulders even and relaxed, elbows and hands relaxed but not limp, feet meeting the floor solidly heels first, breathing easily, rhythmically. Interesting, indeed!

пїЅThe power of the infinity walk comes from realizing that probably all of us are handicapped to some degree by an inability to communicate across hemispheres of the brain because we have not fully developed the neurological networking abilities. How did this happen? In our educational system, both at home and school, our learning has been evaluated by our ability to pick up bits and pieces of information rather than on developing our brains to their greatest potential. This leaves holes in our neurological network.

пїЅWhen performing the infinity walk, both hemispheres must stay active and dominant for different tasks, but must be willing to exchange tasks in perfect synchronization. Also, when walking the figure eight pattern the alteration between left turn, right turn creates yet another hemispheric dominance switch.

пїЅRemember to keep arm movements aligned with the opposite legs, let the shoulders be of equal height but swing them nicely, feel the sway in the backbone. Each involves hemispheric dominance that may or may not need neurological development.

пїЅShort circuits may arise when emotions add to the complexities of the simple infinity walk. Add performance anxiety, embarrassment, and feelings of inadequacy requires a tremendous amount of neural energy. Total motor shut-down may arise in portions of the infinity walk due to this overload. Be aware of this. And never, ever, make fun of someone having difficulties in parts of the infinity walk.

пїЅNew communications path-ways are being created in the brain. It is best not to rush this practice, but to create quality movement in each stage. After the basics, there exist a whole series of exercises that strengthen and enhance existing pathways, and permit new communications pathways to open in previously weakened areas.пїЅ

#9 Associating suggestions with Baroque music – page 80.

Slow-tempo music (largo or andante) written by composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, usually composed for string instruments (violin, mandolin, harp, harpsichord, and guitar), produce sounds rich in natural, high-frequency harmonics. These pieces tend to have a tempo of 55 to 65 beats per minute.

Dr. Milton Erickson did some research regarding beats of music that parallel the human heart and found that 60 beats per minute on a metronome would slow down the bodyпїЅs heartbeat and mind. Dr. Erickson suggested to his patients that they had a whole hour to do something that they usually only had five minutes to do. While in hypnosis, metronome ticking out 60 beats per minute, these individuals would create or plan out something in five minutes that would normally take at least an hour to do.

Today, it has been scientifically proven that low-decibel, high-frequency sounds energize the brain and body.

Listening to Baroque music reduces stress, lowers your blood pressure, slows your heartbeat, changes your brainwaves from beta to alpha by 6%, synchronizes your brain hemispheres, and enhances your immune system in a way similar to mantra meditation.